Sunday, April 01, 2007


A SHAKE-UP IS LOOMING AMONG NZ BOOKSELLERS


I found this story in the Herald on Sunday (1 April) most interesting especially with comments from some of the industry's heavyweights, including Ian Draper of Whitcoulls and Rob Smith of Paper Plus, Dymocks' Perry Lennon, as well as Borders regional manager Justin Barratt, Random House's Michael Moynahan, and Linda Henderson of Booksellers NZ.


Draper must have been misquoted as he is reported as having said that 70% of book sales were in children's books under $20! Yeah, Right! Not even the phenomenal sales of Harry Potter titles could push the % of chilrens books up to 70%.
NZ Herald photograph.

2 comments:

Jeff G said...

If Borders has does such good business here as the article states it begs the question "Why are they selling"
The question that should have been asked is "What profit [or loss] were they making on their $17 million dollar turnover"

Anonymous said...

Yeah, one can't imagine Borders ever made any money out of their giant stores in NZ but the NZ situation has nothing to do with the sale of all their stores outside the US - they are selling the lot and the NZ stores just happen to make up a tiny part of their international business.